building multifamily is one of the lowest risk strategies out there. single fam has no economies of scale and in columbus right now I would argue that the cost of a garage is greater than the value you even get for an appraiser. so a 400 sq ft garage if that was heated space is worth 5x to 6x. because of that, we build multifamily more because of the economies of scale as well as density, increased rent coverage, etc etc 

I'd recommend pushing density to 3 or 4 they all finance the same. we picked 3 because of the 35' height allowance in our area. here is a rendering to help paint the picture. our target appraisal value is 550k on the first few and pushing them to more than 600k as we sell some or keep them but if you are the only one building multifamily it's important to highlight the importance of appraisal and selling or disposing of some assets to create comparable to be used. our market has very little 2-4 units built because of economies of scale we are the only builder doing this style and we control the full process and it is a high barrier to entry where we are at. we are able to build at a lower cost now than almost buying a duplex because they are so small. each one is 668 sq ft total of 2004 sq ft. 

Full trust accounting software, which is very important as it gets complicated the more you scale. 

There's a ton of creative ways to do it here so you can really hone in where you want to be on the profitability to comfortability scale. 

Effectively buying at 100% CLT with a 1st position portfolio or DSCR loan combined with a seller 2nd that the lender wouldn't otherwise approve....It sounds like this is a recipe for getting sued at best, and arrested if it rose to a sufficiently large scale where charges were brought against someone.

property management is a tough business. it's more about economies of scale. do they use software?

I am currently a consultant and I have a CPA but I am hoping to break into real estate investing initially on a small scale and continue to expend my real estate portfolio until it is a full time occupation.

This will come in handy as you begin to scale.5.

@Alexander Merritt   IMHO low end rentals are only suitable for local investors that are in the landlord business and are going to scale up and own as many as they can get 100's have your own PM and maintenance and that's the ONLY way in my mind that stuff will work over any amount of time.buy the best that you can if your just starting out.

We use a company called Scale Virtually that is a VA company that works in the real estate space.Good luckGino